Thoughts for NYNO on ‘Reformed, Reforming, Emerging, and Experimenting’ (3)

The previous post hinted at one of the limitations (or liberations!) of emerging church work in the Church of Scotland: there are currently some finances available for salaried pioneering work, but this is not available for the long term. From what I understand, no one could really hope for more than three years.

In the previous posts we were still dwelling on the task of being a creative, participatory church (whatever that means) and the probable need for a curating leadership in that. At the same time, NYNO can’t be dependent on paid ministry in the long term.

There’s lots to be said about the status of emerging ministries with respect to the wider church (it’s an ongoing conversation, which needs to keep going), but as things stand, financially, any model of emerging church can’t sensibly be dependent on paid employment. NYNO is therefore working on the basis that the current paid project workers can’t make themselves indispensable as paid employees to any church they found. Our reasoning is that we want a NYNO congregation to be something that any church could set up. Therefore we can’t establish a model based on having paid employees.

All congregations will need leaders, it can hardly be avoided, but we need to be facilitators, resource givers rather than a primary source of spiritual care. We can lead NYNO congregations but in not in a way that they depend on our personal genius(!) or charisma. If someone else tries to create a NYNO congregation but concludes, ‘We couldn’t do it because we’re just not you’, then we will have failed.